"Amazon" wasn't the company's original name.

Jeff Bezos originally wanted to give the company the magical sounding name "Cadabra."

Amazon's first lawyer, Todd Tarbert, convinced him that the name sounded too similar to "Cadaver," especially over the phone.

Bezos also favored the name "Relentless." If you visit Relentless.com today, guess where it navigates to...

He finally chose "Amazon" because he liked that the company would be named after the largest river in the world, hence the company's original logo.

In the early days of Amazon, a bell would ring in the office every time someone made a purchase, and everyone would gather around to see if they knew the customer.

It only took a few weeks before the bell was ringing so frequently that they had to turn it off.

Also, Amazon got started out of Bezos' garage and the servers that the company used required so much power that Bezos and his wife couldn't run a hair dryer or a vacuum in the house without blowing a fuse.

In the first month of its launch, Amazon had already sold books to people in all 50 states and in 45 different countries.

An obscure book about lichens saved Amazon from going bankrupt.

Book distributors required retailers to order ten books at a time, and Amazon didn't need that much inventory yet (or have that much money).

So, the team discovered a loophole. Although the distributors required that Amazon ordered ten books, the company didn't need to receive that many. So, they would order one book they needed, and nine copies of an obscure lichen book, which was always out of stock.